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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Maya Widmaier-Picasso dated Paris le 2 Avril 2005.
Picasso has depicted in this drawing the abduction of a nubile young woman by an older hirsute brute, whose glasses incongruously lend him a professorial air. Picasso was very likely referring in this sheet to his two paintings after Poussin, L'enlèvement des sabines, that he painted on 24 October and 4, 8 November 1962 (Z., vol. 23, nos. 6 & 69; the latter fig. 1). Picasso commenced these paintings and related studies on the day before his eighty-first birthday. He executed the present drawing on the eighth anniversary of this event, on the occasion of his eighty-ninth birthday.
The stringy haired and bearded man seen here later reappeared, without eyeglasses, in the etching appropriately titled Homme primitif, Célestine et fille (Baer, vol. 7, no. 1940; fig. 2). Picasso also referred to the pose of the unfortunate girl in the present drawing when he executed the etching, where he seated her similarly with one leg raised over the other, revealing her sex.
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, L'enlèvement des sabines, 4, 8 November 1962
Musée National d'Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
©Photo CNAC/MNAM Dist. RMN ©Christian Bahier - Philippe Migeat
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Homme primitif, Célestine et fille, 11 March 1971, etching.
©Succession Picasso DACS 2005
Picasso has depicted in this drawing the abduction of a nubile young woman by an older hirsute brute, whose glasses incongruously lend him a professorial air. Picasso was very likely referring in this sheet to his two paintings after Poussin, L'enlèvement des sabines, that he painted on 24 October and 4, 8 November 1962 (Z., vol. 23, nos. 6 & 69; the latter fig. 1). Picasso commenced these paintings and related studies on the day before his eighty-first birthday. He executed the present drawing on the eighth anniversary of this event, on the occasion of his eighty-ninth birthday.
The stringy haired and bearded man seen here later reappeared, without eyeglasses, in the etching appropriately titled Homme primitif, Célestine et fille (Baer, vol. 7, no. 1940; fig. 2). Picasso also referred to the pose of the unfortunate girl in the present drawing when he executed the etching, where he seated her similarly with one leg raised over the other, revealing her sex.
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, L'enlèvement des sabines, 4, 8 November 1962
Musée National d'Art Moderne - Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
©Photo CNAC/MNAM Dist. RMN ©Christian Bahier - Philippe Migeat
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Homme primitif, Célestine et fille, 11 March 1971, etching.
©Succession Picasso DACS 2005